MILWAUKEE (CN) — Gun rights advocates on Tuesday took stock of firearm politics and laws during a panel discussion at the Republican National Convention in light of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump — and resolved to keep fighting gun restrictions.
The United States Concealed Carry Association’s plan to host its panel at the swanky Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee predated the events at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. But it gained new significance after one rally attendee was killed and the former president was injured by a lone gunman bearing an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
The general tenor was that the death of former firefighter Corey Comperatore and injury of one of the most security-protected people on Earth were a tragedy, but that a continued push for the rights of gunowners and education of situational awareness — not gun control — is the answer.
“It was an event that impacts everyone totally differently. And, you know, it weighs on us, those that were affected, that were taken,” said Chris LaCivita, a longtime Republican political strategist now working as a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign. “And it’s just an important thing to remember that you have to be situationally aware at all times.”
LaCivita said that, Saturday aside, Trump’s campaign has consistently promoted a “Make America Safe Again” message about personal and public safety. He then pivoted into a point about “rogue prosecutors” and liberal district attorneys in big cities who refuse to punish criminals.
He also blamed President Joe Biden, saying it “starts with the border” and a rise in crimes committed by migrants.
“These are things that are directly tied to Joe Biden,” he said, charging that the president is “saying the quiet part out loud” with an “extreme anti-firearm policy.”
If elected, starting in 2025 Trump will continue to support Second Amendment rights, largely by focusing on the judiciary, LaCivita said. Trump appointed more than 200 judges during his presidency, including three U.S. Supreme Court justices — in LaCivita’s words, he “remade the judiciary.”
Trump has warned that a continuation of Democratic control of the White House will result in restrictions and even confiscation of citizens’ guns. The National Rifle Association endorsed the former president’s campaign in May.
The Biden administration has taken some steps to address gun violence, including with a rule expanding background checks that was blocked by federal judge this year. The president has also called for a ban on assault weapons and created an executive-branch Office of Gun Violence Protection under the purview of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump himself took a small step toward gun control by banning bump stocks in 2018, about one year after a gunman using bump stock-equipped weapons killed 58 and injured hundreds more at a Las Vegas music festival.
The ban didn’t last. The U.S. Supreme Court — including the three Trump-appointed justices — reversed it last month. Two years before that, the nation’s highest court ruled that a New York law restricting concealed-carry was unconstitutional.
Three congressional representatives on the panel seemed to agree that the issue lies with problem individuals, not access to guns or the weapons themselves.
U.S. Representative Kat Cammack of Florida said that Trump’s shooting was a “catastrophic failure” by the FBI and Secret Service. U.S. Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas, a veteran of the Iraq War, praised Trump for his strength and bravery and a Secret Service agent for killing the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Of the rifle used in the Trump rally shooting, Hunt said the political left are using the AR-15 as a scapegoat “to make everyone seem like a crazed mass shooter.” The congressman noted that he owns five of the weapons — one for each of his children.
LaCivita pointed out that it was “mind-blowing” that gunowners don’t vote at the level of those who don’t own guns, an assertion fact checkers have deemed inaccurate.
Cammack said it is crucial to get gunowners registered to vote. She also mentioned the need to push a bill through Congress that would loosen federal regulations on carrying a concealed handgun across state lines.
U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald, who served in the Wisconsin Legislature for more than 20 years before his election to the House of Representatives in 2020, noted Wisconsin’s hunting and shooting tradition and legal protections for hunters and gunowners.
Wisconsin is a concealed carry and open carry state. Its gun laws came under new attention when it was announced that a Milwaukee ordinance would ban items like tennis balls, coolers and ladders in the RNC’s security footprint, but not guns. City officials blamed the disparity on restrictions put in place by state law.
There were more than 43,000 deaths from gun violence in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which also says there have been 298 mass shootings in the country so far this year. The organization defines a mass shooting as an incident of gun violence that kills four or more people, not including the shooter.
“Guns aren’t going anywhere,” Hunt said at the panel, including the 400 million currently in circulation in the United States.